1997-1998 Season Schedule

Put on your dancing shoes, jump in your time machine, and help us celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Library of Congress Music Division! Dance scholar and producer Elizabeth Aldrich (known for authentic and visually sumptuous dance sequences in the films Jefferson in Paris and The Age of Innocence) creates a centennial spectacle--a vision appropriate for our founding year, 1897. Her Jonquil Street Foundation Dancers present a grand evening of quadrilles, waltzes, polonaises, and two-steps, a dazzling display of dances and amusements from the 1890's.

After the performance, we turn the dance floor over to you, as the Library of Congress Centennial Cotillion Brass Band, under the direction of Robert E. Sheldon, the Library's Curator of the Musical Instruments Collections, plays vintage music from the Music Division vaults. Relive those days with us, as we celebrate our one hundredth birthday in the Library's magnificent Great Hall.

IL GIARDINO ARMONICO (period instrument ensemble)

"[Their] Vivaldi was so astonishing that it put worthy local efforts in the shade... Il Giardino Armonico are brilliant players by any standard." - The New York Times

BORROMEO and BRENTANO STRING QUARTETS

"Blockbuster" comes to mind for this concert pairing two of the finest string quartets around. "The Borromeo is simply the best there is," raves The Boston Globe. The Philadelphia Inquirer declares that the Brentano players "...could well be the best of the latest generation."

MARIETTA SIMPSON and JEROME ROSE (mezzo-soprano and piano)

Marietta Simpson's "rich tone, searching musicianship, and imposing stage presence endow everything she sings with great depth of feeling," says The Atlanta Journal. One of the most sought-after mezzo-sopranos performing today, Ms. Simpson collaborates with such luminaries as Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Simon Rattle, and Robert Shaw.

THE NEW YORK VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE

"Impeccable musicianship and great joy in performance..." - The New York Times

Winning first prize at the thirty-sixth Annual Geneva International Music Competition is one of many notable achievements of the New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, which counts more than 1500 concerts in its twenty-six year history. The program for this distinguished ensemble--currently recording the complete vocal chamber music of Johannes Brahms--includes Lieder, vocal quartets, partsongs, and motets by Schubert and Brahms.

OLAF BAER and WARREN JONES (baritone & piano)

"Baer is at the height of his art, and in the twenty-four songs...he revealed the master's touch," Australia's Manly Daily declared.

SKAMPA STRING QUARTET

Founded in 1989 at the Prague Academy of Music, the Skampa Quartet's hallmarks are intensity and vigor, passion and finesse. In 1994, the group became Wigmore Hall's first quartet-in-residence. The London Times reports that the Wigmore concerts are "red-letter days in London's chamber music season."

SANDRA MILLER (flute)

with MARY OLESKIEWICZ (flute), ROB TURNER (flute), DAVID SCHULENBERG (harpsichord), NANCY WILSON (violin), DAVID MILLER (viola),
LISA TERRY (cello), and JAMES RICHMAN (harpsichord)

GRAND MUSIC CINEMA (live music with film)

Grand Music Cinema transports you to a time when the new medium of film plus live music equaled a unique and compelling art. Conductor and musicologist Gillian Anderson has reconstructed and restored the original orchestral scores for more than twenty of the great silent classics, performing them in Europe, the United States and South America.

Film composer Elmer Bernstein (The Age of Innocence, The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven) has created a new violin-and-piano score, commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, for a visually stunning, hand-painted Dutch gem from the earliest days of the cinema: The 400 Tricks of the Devil (The Adventures of a Professor) Fantasie-Film . Come join us for the premiere of Bernstein's score and the evening's featured work, a 1926 MGM version of La Bohème, starring Lillian Gish as Mimi and John Gilbert as Rodolfo.

Tango buffs can see clips from Gardel's 1930's Paramount films El día que me quieras (The Day You Love Me), Cuesta abajo (Downward Slope), Tango Bar, and El Tango en Broadway. Ms. Salgado will present her lecture in English.

CHEE-YUN (violin)

"Elegant calculation...this is a talented instrumentalist, with the kind of high-gloss tone that pulls sensuously at the listener's ear." - The New York Times

Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, Chee-Yun is "a rising star among a pack of young virtuoso violinists," says The Cincinnati Enquirer. Known for "doing something different" in her programs -- a concerto for violin and gamelan by Lou Harrison, and arrangements of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story -- the Korean-born Chee-Yun has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Aspen, and Spoleto festivals, and has collaborated with such conductors as Pinchas Zukerman, Gerard Schwarz, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Recital program to be announced.

HOURYU-KAI (Japanese Noh Theater)

Houryu-kai, one of Japan's most revered artistic ensembles, will appear at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress for a special performance on Sunday, March 29 at 6:00 p.m. Washington audiences will be offered a rare opportunity to see an evening-length Noh presentation by Houryu-kai, an internationally-recognized troupe of players trained in the Hohshoh School tradition. The company is led by Ryuzoh Tazaki, who was designated one of Japan's "Important Intangible Cultural Assets" in 1991.

The featured work for the March 29th Noh performance is Funabenkei (Benkei Aboard Ship), a story about the involuntary separation of Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune, a tragic hero of the late 12th century, from his lover Shizuka-gozen. Benkei, Yoshitsune's retainer, insists that honor dictates that the two must separate, to appease a family conflict with Yoshitsune's brother Yoritomo. After Shizuka's departure Yoshitsune and his men take to the sea, on a voyage of exile. Their ship is attacked by a vengeful warrior ghost from the Taira clan, whom Yoshitsune has vanquished, but Benkei's priestly powers overcome the angry ghost, which fades away into the netherworld.

Also to be presented with Funabenkei is a farce, Kyogen: Fukuro-Tamabushi (The Owl-Mountain Priest) with Ishida Yukio as Shite, a mountain priest; Nomura Mansai as Ado, the big brother; and Koado, the little brother, Ishida Tanro.

The Noh performance is being presented under the auspices of the Music Division and the Asian Division of the Library of Congress, in cooperation with the 1998 National Cherry Blossom Festival and the Embassy of Japan.

PAUL DRESHER ENSEMBLE with DAVID ABEL (violin)

"This may be a chamber concerto in size of musical forces...but the scope and effect ranged from rock band to Wagnerian orchestra...tantalizing, strikingly original and immensely satisfying" (Octavio Roca, The San Francisco Chronicle).

BEAUX ARTS TRIO

Time magazine writes about pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Ida Kavafian, and cellist Peter Wiley: "Among the world's piano trios, there is none better ... the Beaux Arts players' real virtuosity lies in their ability to become one instrument."

IRINA REES (harpsichord)

A graduate of the Russian National Academy of Music in Moscow, Irina Rees won First Prize at the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society's Fourth International Competition in 1996.

JELLY ROLL! (two-man cabaret) - Starring
Vernel Bagneris and Morten Gunnar Larsen, Piano

Winner of the Obie Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and Best Off-Broadway Musical, Outer Circle Critics Award

"Bagneris is one of those musical-comedy performers whom you get to see only two or three times in your life..." - Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker

"One of the most revivifying entertainments to be found on Broadway or off..." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times

"A 90-minute tribute to the now-legendary Jelly Roll Morton, the New Orleans jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader as well as the self-styled creator of jazz," writes critic Vincent Canby. Jelly Roll! is a dazzling two-man cabaret evening of sketches honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Morton's epoch-making 1938 recording sessions in the Coolidge Auditorium with folklorist Alan Lomax.

A master of the American vernacular, actor, author, song-and-dance-man Vernel Bagneris wrote and starred in the hit shows One Mo' Time, Further Mo', and Staggerlee. With his longtime musical partner, the brilliant Norwegian pianist Morten Gunnar Larsen, Bagneris crafted Jelly Roll!, conjuring the jazz genius in riveting re-creations of his words and music. "...Bagneris is laid-back, effortless, and swinging. When he sings, he recalls Fred Astaire, and when he dances, his feet--in the lingo of Honi Coles, praising Bill Robinson--never touch the ground," Balliett enthused in The New Yorker. The Associated Press dubs Larsen "a pianist with lightning fingers and early jazz in his soul..."; "It takes two to make Jelly Roll," comments Martin Gayford; Bagneris and Larsen "are clearly the two halves of one great man" (John Simon).

Meet the man and his music in Jelly Roll! an unforgettable evening of musical theater.

ANTHONY BRAXTON (Ghost Trance Music)

"...Completely stimulating performances -- spellbinding in fact...hope for future generations of music." -- DOWN BEAT

The uncompromising integrity of musical philosopher Anthony Braxton earned the composer a coveted MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. A formidable saxophonist and master improviser, Braxton creates ambitious and visionary compositions--his opera, Trillium R, multimedia collaborations with video and graphic artists, large-scale music theater and performance art works--that transcend genre and integrate performance traditions: what Braxton describes as the "trans-African" and the American experimentalist perspectives. The program includes the premiere of his Ghost Trance Duo for Violin and Piano.

MILTON BABBITT SYMPOSIUM

Milton Babbitt is one of the most important composers and music theorists of the twentieth century. Born in Philadelphia on May 10, 1916, he was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (mathematics, 1931), New York University (music, 1932-35, B.A.), and Princeton University (music, M.F.A., 1942). At Princeton Mr. Babbitt was on the music faculty 1938-42 and 1948-60 and on the mathematics faculty 1943-45; he was named Conant Professor of Music at Princeton in 1960 and he has been Professor Emeritus there since 1981. He has also been on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music since 1973. He has taught at Darmstadt, Tanglewood, Salzburg, and the New England Conservatory. Among numerous awards and honorary degrees, in 1982 he received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for life's work.

Milton Babbitt is a long time friend of the Music Division in the Library of Congress. Beside having several of his own works premiered at the Library, since 1977 Mr. Babbitt has served on the Coolidge Foundation Committee, lending valuable assistance to the Music Division regarding commissioning of the works of other composers. Most recently, he agreed to donate his papers to the Library. The Babbitt collection will give a unique and valuable insight into many of the most important musical developments in our recent past--developments Mr. Babbitt himself fostered.

* 10:00 a.m. - Introduction (Stephen Soderberg, Music Division) and Welcome (Jon Newsom, Chief, Music Division)
* 10:10 a.m. - Babbitt, Stravinsky, and the Serial "Tyranny" of the 1950s and 1960s (Joseph Straus, Queens College and Graduate School, City University of New York) ABSTRACT: According to many standard accounts, serialism dominated American musical life in the 1950s and 1960s, at least in classical music circles. In an empirical study that draws on contemporary books, magazines, and newspapers as well as lists of grants, awards, and faculty positions, I will challenge that account and demonstrate that serialism, if it dominated anywhere, did so only at the very periphery of American musical life. As a proof of my revisionist account, I will study the case of Babbitt and Stravinsky. Babbitt is usually taken as the principal exponent of serialism in America and Stravinsky the most prominent convert to that approach. I will attempt to measure the influence exerted on Stravinsky by Babbitt and other members of the serial community in order to discover if Stravinsky was bowing to pressure from a dominant group or pursuing his own, idiosyncratic compositional agenda.
* 10:50 a.m. - What's the Use of the Twelve-Tone System? (Joseph Dubiel, Columbia University) ABSTRACT: Most discussion of Milton Babbitt's music focuses on its being "twelve-tone." Babbitt's writing strongly directs attention to this fact; yet Babbitt also emphasizes that this fact may not account for much about any particular twelve-tone piece (especially compared with what the fact of being tonal may account for about a tonal piece). It is not simple to understand how observations of twelve-tonishness might be indispensable at the same time as they are relatively unrevealing. An important possibility to consider is that the very limitation of what the twelve-tone system implies about a twelve-tone work is the crucially interesting characteristic of the system: thus twelve-tone theory in general might be considered remarkable precisely for how lightly it grasps its objects. Obviously this claim will require careful elaboration in order not to be seen as mere evasion of the reasonable demand for theoretical constructs to have perceptual meaning. Such elaboration will be undertaken in the lecture.
* 11:50 a.m. - Rigors of Subjectivity (Marion A. Guck, University of Michigan) ABSTRACT: Milton Babbitt is known for, among other things, certain methodological claims he has made, particularly his stipulation that music scholars must take the language of science as their model of verbal adequacy. What he meant was that certain standards of precision must be adhered to, not, as so many people seem to have thought, that a particular style of language must be used in musical descriptions. I wrote about these issues once before, and I propose to return to them in light of greater experience with Babbitt's precepts in order to consider why they might matter to those, like myself, who view musical analysis as interpretive rather than an explanatory. To exemplify these as well as other methodological and analytical concerns Babbitt has taught us to care about, I will provide an account of Brahms' Intermezzo in Eb Major, Op. 117, no. 1, a piece that raises interesting questions about the appeal of its simplicity and complexity at much the same time.
* 12:30 p.m. - Milton Babbitt's "Three Theatrical Songs" in Perspective (Allen Forte, Yale University with Richard Lalli, Yale University, baritone) ABSTRACT: This presentation aspires to provide informative perspectives on Babbitt's three remarkable songs, both as they relate to traditional music for the American musical theater and with respect to the special idiomatic features that identify them as innovational, representing an original approach to the theater song that is of the highest musical quality.
* 2:30 p.m. - Listening to Milton Babbitt's Electronic Music: the Medium and the Message ( Robert Morris, Eastman School of Music) ABSTRACT: Over the last four decades, Milton Babbitt has been often cited as a "pioneer" in two areas of twentieth-century music: serial and electronic music. Even if Babbitt is less remembered today for his contributions to the development of American electronic music, he certainly was a major figure in its history; in fact, he was the first major composer to make music of substance on a digitally-controlled synthesizer. And the ten electronic works Babbitt composed from 1961 to 1979--most of them for synthesized tape and instruments--still shine as examples of the best of the genre. My paper examines Babbitt's conception of the electronic medium which includes his consideration of issues in psychoacoustics that directly bear on the perception of musical sound, synthesized or otherwise. I sample passages from two of Babbitt's early electronic pieces--the Composition for Synthesizer and Ensembles for Synthesizer--to show how Babbitt was able to use the medium to implement his innovative musical interests of the 1960s, such as the time point system and the articulation of arrays of pitch classes and time points. Examples and discussion of later electronic works indicate the means by which Babbitt resolved or confronted the problematics of "programmed" electronic music.
* 3:10 p.m.- Reflections (1974) for Piano and Synthesized Tape, by Milton Babbitt (Performed by Robert Taub,
Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University)
* 3:50 p.m. - Still Being an American Composer--Milton Babbitt at 80 (Andrew Mead, University of Michigan)
* 4:30 p.m. - Response (Milton Babbitt, Princeton University and The Juilliard School of Music)

On the occasion of the acquisition by the Library of the Martha Graham Archives

* Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring
* Tony Award-winning choreographer Susan Stroman's Gershwin Graham--"But Not For Me" (World Premiere)

Gershwin Graham--"But Not For Me" was commissioned with the generous support of the Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund and AT&T.